Chapter 8
BASH
Eddie’s lips were soft against mine, tentative and warm, breaking down every carefully constructed boundary I’d built around this assignment.
For a split second, my brain couldn’t process what was happening.
One moment, we’d been watching hockey players tear each other’s clothes off, and the next, Eddie was kissing me.
Then my body took over where my mind had failed, and I was kissing him back before I could remember all the reasons why this was the worst possible idea in the history of bad ideas.
Christ, he tasted like the mint tea he’d been drinking earlier, fresh and clean.
His hand came up to rest against my cheek with such tenderness that I nearly forgot how to breathe.
Eddie was kissing me like he’d been thinking about it for days, like he’d been building up the courage for exactly this moment.
Which, given the calculating way he’d suggested this TV show and maneuvered us onto this couch together, he probably had.
The realization should’ve alarmed me. Instead, it sent heat straight through my chest and into places that had no business responding while I was supposed to be working.
My hands found his waist, fingers pressing into the soft material of his sweater, and Eddie made a small sound against my mouth that went straight to my cock.
When we finally broke apart—and I had no clue which one of us pulled back first—Eddie was staring at me with wide, green eyes and kiss-swollen lips, looking like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d done. That made two of us.
His chest was rising and falling rapidly, and there was a flush creeping up his neck that I wanted to trace with my tongue. Jesus. I needed to get my head together.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I shouldn’t have… It was presumptuous of me, and if I’ve made you uncomfortable…”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t apologize.”
His face lit up with hope, and I felt my carefully maintained control slip another notch. “So you… you didn’t mind?”
Mind? I was pretty sure my heart was going to beat right out of my chest like a June bug in a mason jar, and my hands were shaking with the effort of not pulling him back against me immediately.
Every nerve ending in my body was on high alert, hyper-focused on how close he was, how warm he felt, how his lips were still parted like he was waiting for me to kiss him again.
“No. I didn’t mind.”
We sat there staring at each other while the hockey players on screen continued their encounter, all breathless moans and groans and grunts that echoed the tension crackling between us.
The real drama was happening right here on our dorm couch, in the space between Eddie’s uncertainty and my inability to pretend I didn’t want this.
Because I did want this. I wanted it so much, it scared the hell out of me.
Eddie shifted closer, his hand moving back to my face, fingers tracing along my jawline with butterfly-light touches that made me shiver. I could see the exact moment he decided to be brave again, his green eyes darkening.
“Bash,” he said softly, leaning in like he was going to kiss me again, and my brain decided to crash back online like a computer rebooting after a power surge.
What the hell was I doing? I was supposed to be maintaining operational security, not compromising the mission because a pretty boy had kissed me.
This was Eddie. Prince Gregory Edward William Mountbatten-Windsor. Fourth in line to the British throne. My protectee, my responsibility, the most important assignment of my career. And I was sitting here letting him kiss me like some lovesick teenager who’d never heard of professional boundaries.
Glenn would be rolling over in his grave.
The thought of my brother hit me like an ice bucket dumped over my head.
Glenn, who’d died serving his country with honor and dignity.
Glenn, who’d never let personal feelings compromise his duty.
Glenn, who’d trusted me to carry on the family tradition of service and sacrifice.
What would he think of me now, throwing away everything he’d died for because I was attracted to someone?
I must’ve gone rigid, because Eddie’s expression immediately shifted from hopeful to worried, his hand dropping away from my face like I’d burned him.
“Are you alright?” he asked quietly, searching my face with those too-perceptive eyes. “Have I misread this entirely? Because if I have, we can pretend this never happened. I won’t make things awkward, I promise.”
The genuine concern in his voice, the way he was immediately trying to give me an out, made something twist painfully in my chest. It was so typical of Eddie to put my comfort ahead of his own potential embarrassment, being considerate even when he was clearly as affected as I was.
“No,” I said quickly, because the last thing I wanted was for him to think this was one-sided. The bulge in my jeans was proof enough of how very not one-sided this was. “No, you haven’t misread anything. It’s just…”
“Complicated,” Eddie finished with a rueful smile that was somehow both understanding and heartbreaking.
I opened my mouth to explain about my job, about professional boundaries, about all the ways this could destroy everything we’d built.
About Glenn, about family expectations, about the career this assignment was supposed to launch.
About how I was supposed to be protecting him, not taking advantage of his trust to explore my own selfish desires.
But Eddie was looking at me with such understanding, such gentle patience, that the words died in my throat. There was something in his expression that suggested he knew exactly what internal war I was fighting, like he’d been fighting a similar battle himself.
Maybe he had been. Maybe that explained why he’d been so nervous around me, so careful with his words and his glances.
Maybe he’d been wanting this as much as I had, only he’d been braver about acting on it.
The thought of Eddie wanting me—really wanting me, not merely getting caught up in the moment—was enough to shatter what remained of my self-control.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, reaching for him, my hand tangling in those impossibly soft strands of hair as I pulled him back to me.
This time, I kissed him like I’d been wanting to for weeks.
This kiss was nothing like the first one.
This was desperate and hungry and completely beyond my control.
Eddie made a soft sound of surprise that turned into something deeper, needier, as I pressed him back against the couch cushions.
His hands fisted in my T-shirt, pulling me closer, and I could feel the rapid beat of his heart against my chest.
Christ, he was responding like he’d been waiting for this kind of intensity, like he’d been holding back as much as I had, and now that we’d crossed this line, he was ready to sprint toward whatever came next.
On the TV, Ilya was fucking Shane hard, but I barely registered it because Eddie was arching up into me, his lips parting under mine in a way that made rational thought completely impossible.
I’d spent all these years telling myself I could live without this, that I could ignore the part of myself that wanted men, that I could be satisfied with safe, uncomplicated relationships that wouldn’t threaten my career or disappoint my family.
So many years of pushing down every inconvenient attraction, every wondering thought, every moment when I’d caught myself looking at a man and wanting.
But Eddie was destroying every lie I’d told myself with every kiss, every touch, with the way he breathed my name against my mouth.
My hand slipped under the hem of his sweater, fingers skimming across warm skin, and Eddie’s breath hitched in a way that sent electricity straight through me. His stomach was firm under my palm, muscles jumping at my touch, and he made a sound that was part gasp, part plea.
“Bash,” he whispered and the way he said my name—like a prayer, like a promise—made me want to do things that would definitely cross more lines than we’d already obliterated.
This was moving faster than green grass through a goose, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Not when Eddie was looking at me like I was something precious, like I was exactly what he’d been hoping for.
Not when his hands were sliding under my shirt, fingers tracing the scars on my ribs with a reverence that made my heart stutter.
I was just leaning down to kiss him again, my hand sliding higher under his sweater, when the most obnoxious sound in the world split the air around us.
The fire alarm.
We sprang apart like we’d been electrocuted, both of us staring at the ceiling where the smoke detector was flashing red and emitting a piercing shriek that made conversation impossible.
Eddie’s hair was completely messed from my fingers, his lips red and swollen, his sweater rucked up to show a strip of pale skin that I wanted to kiss.
He looked as dazed and frustrated as I felt.
“Fuck,” I shouted over the alarm, already reaching for our jackets, making sure I had my gun.
Emergency protocols kicked in automatically—get Eddie out of the building, assess the situation, keep him safe.
But my hands were still shaking from what we’d been doing, and I had to force myself to focus on anything other than how he’d felt pressed against me.
“Is it real?” Eddie called back, already moving toward the door with the kind of quick responsiveness that made my job easier even in moments like this. Even flustered and kiss-drunk, he was following my lead without question.
“Doesn’t matter,” I replied, grabbing my keys and phone. “We evacuate either way.”
The hallway was already filling with annoyed students in various states of undress—some in pajamas, others wrapped in towels, a few who’d clearly been in similar situations to ours based on their disheveled appearance and frustrated expressions.
We joined the stream of people filing toward the exits, and I automatically positioned myself between Eddie and the crowd, scanning for potential threats.
Outside, the evening air was sharp and cold, making everyone hunch into their jackets and complain about the interruption.
Students clustered in small groups on the lawn across from our building, some on their phones, others chatting with each other while waiting for the all-clear so they could go back to whatever they’d been doing.
Eddie stayed close to my side. Close enough that when the wind picked up, his hair brushed against my cheek and made me want to find a dark corner where we could finish what we’d started.
“Well,” Eddie said quietly, his breath visible in the cold air, “that’s one way to kill the mood.”
I looked down at him—his cheeks flushed from cold and kissing, his hair still messed from my hands, his green eyes bright with lingering heat—and something ached inside me that had nothing to do with professional responsibility and everything to do with how much I wanted to take him back upstairs and explore every sound he’d made against my mouth.
But whatever conversation we needed to have about what had transpired between us, it couldn’t happen surrounded by half our dormitory.
The fire department arrived within minutes with two trucks and an ambulance, which seemed like overkill for a dorm building but was standard protocol.
Better safe than sorry and all that. Firefighters in full gear tramped through the building while we all stood around shivering and waiting, the excitement of the emergency slowly giving way to annoyance at the inconvenience.
After what felt like hours but was only twenty minutes, one of the firefighters emerged from the building and gave the all-clear.
False alarm, triggered by someone’s overenthusiastic cooking experiment on the second floor.
Students began filing back inside, complaining about the interruption and the cold.
Eddie and I walked back to our apartment in silence.
My body was still humming with unfulfilled want, every nerve ending hypersensitive to his presence beside me.
The memory of his hands on my skin, the sound he’d made when I’d touched him, the way he’d arched into me like he couldn’t get close enough was all playing on repeat in my head, making it hard to think about anything else.
The TV was still on when we got back, the show paused mid-scene. The evidence of what had been happening before the alarm was everywhere—couch cushions askew, Eddie’s sweater still twisted, the lingering tension in the air that spoke of interrupted intimacy.
“So,” Eddie said, sitting down with careful precision, “that happened.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, because eloquent conversation was apparently beyond me at the moment.
My brain was still trying to process the fact that Eddie had kissed me, that I’d kissed him back, that we’d been about thirty seconds away from doing something that would’ve changed everything between us permanently. “It did.”
We sat there in our small living room, the overhead lights too bright after the soft glow from the TV. Everything had changed. There was no going back to professional distance, no pretending that what I felt for Eddie was anything close to appropriate.
“What happens now?” Eddie asked quietly, his green eyes searching my face for answers I wasn’t sure I had.
I looked at him in his rumpled sweater with his hair still messed from my fingers, waiting for me to decide what came next. There was vulnerability in his expression, but also determination, like he was prepared to fight for whatever this was between us if I gave him any encouragement at all.
And for the first time in my adult life, I had no idea what the right answer was.
All I knew was that I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted to cross the space between us and kiss him again.